


All the Heroes Are Dead

by BelowBedlam



Series: Poetry for Interstellar Blitz [4]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Affection, Angst, F/M, Friendship, I really like the idea of Tali just looking at Garrus and going "stupid"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 04:32:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7670164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BelowBedlam/pseuds/BelowBedlam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After dealing with Father Kyle and his biotic cult, Zisys thinks about the event that has defined her career thus far.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Heroes Are Dead

**Author's Note:**

> TW for an extremely brief mention of past self-harm in the aftermath of shock, involving a needle.

No one goes into Zisys’s room. No one’s even tried; no one’s ever knocked. Not even Ashley, who has taken to calling her “skipper.” It makes Zisys feel like they’re on a sailboat in some earthbound bay and there are crudités waiting below deck along with flutes of champagne. Zisys would love some bubbly right about now, but she doesn’t drink on her ship. It’s not a hard rule; there’s an expensive bottle of whiskey still in its fancy box in her storage container, waiting for her to break her own code.

She has been called “butcher” so many times in the last couple years that it shouldn’t hurt like this. But this time, Major Kyle had said it as easily as he’d said her name when they took Torfan together.

 _Ah, the Butcher of Torfan._ He’d said it like a relief, and like he had been waiting for her. As if, somehow, her reappearance had done something to his hurt. Cracked it open like an egg so it could stop festering inside.

That’s all Zisys could see when she looked at him. The same hurt that had consumed him once they’d sat together in his office, pushing through the paperwork from that bloody mission. Bloodbath. Massacre. Yeah, it’d been a massacre- she’s not sorry about it on the batarians’ end.

Some days she wonders if it could have been different. Most days she wonders why they didn’t kick her out of the fleet, successful mission or no.

She knows why she stayed; she has nowhere else to go. Not sure if she’s really good at anything else but this.

Zisys has successfully compartmentalized the memories of the Torfan assault. From the moment she made ground to the moment she resurfaced with the last of her platoon is blocked off, folded away. She doesn’t even dream about it anymore. Those nightmares had made her sick. Ate up all her leave time, then ate up the extra leave they’d given her out of pity. So, she hooked up with an asari who knew how to help with that sort of thing. Apparently she’d helped a lot of soldiers - those who could afford it - keep sane in the wake of that kind of trauma. Most of them hadn’t been the creator of the traumas that haunted them, however.

 She wonders if they have anything comparable in the Alliance now, for Major Kyle’s sake. If it is even an option for him, so long grieving; Zisys feels guilty because while she carries those deaths with her and will carry them until her own, she recovered.

Or, she is recovering.

Now, she lay in bed half dressed, her hair unbound and strewn over her pillows, wet where her tears fall. The picture of her old squad lay safe and dry on her stomach, beneath her hand. All because her broken, ex-commanding officer had called her the name everyone calls her behind her back.

Regardless, Zisys is glad she hadn’t had to kill Kyle, and that they were able to spare the biotic fanatics that followed him. She doesn’t know if she could take another massacre, small or not, so soon after hearing _that name_ from one of the few soldiers whose utterance of it mattered. _The Butcher of Torfan._

If anyone could say that name and mean it, really know what it meant, it’s Kyle. Poor, sad, fucking Kyle. He’d stared at her when she’d made it back to him, covered in blood with the two surviving squad members on either side of her. Two. Sadie McNeil and Shawn Houston, both of whom were discharged not long after. But at that moment they were two tall, thin messes, about as much in shock as a person could be and still function. And Kyle had just stared. He’d seen and heard what had happened as it happened, heard the frantic relay Zisys had kept up until each and every fucking aggressor on that rock was dead.

Zisys had been on autopilot for a while by the time she made it back to base with the meager remainder of her squad in tow. She didn’t realize she had a migraine, or that she was hungry, or that she had to piss something fierce. She didn’t really feel anything, and they made her sit in the med bay until she responded to the doctor poking her periodically with a needle. Even when she did feel it, it hardly hurt; when the doctor turned his back she pushed the needle into her arm a few times just to see her blood pearl. They sedated her after that.

“Taylor, Gray, Awe, Amezcua, Renee, Nguyen, Cook, Shada.” Zisys calls the names of the soldiers in her picture, her main squad, sighing. “And B Squad, all of them. Grant and Tory and them. Landry’s squad. One day I won’t be lying in bed reciting. I don’t even pray, as some of y’all were well aware. I still don’t, in case you’re wondering.”

The lava lamp in her bunk changes color ever few seconds: blue to green to red, softening to pink and purple and pulsing. Her glow-in-the-dark star stickers are that ugly, pale-green on her far wall. No matter what ship she’s on, she always slaps some of those hideous things on the wall. Force of habit; usually, all of her funky lights calm her to sleep. Tonight they’re just weird, but she doesn’t want to lay in the dark or feel the harsh sting of the overhead light. She’ll have to deal.

“I miss you all,” she says to the quiet room, blinking away the sting threatening her eyes. The packet of sour candies she’d been eating rustles as she pushes them away. “I didn’t even know B squad that well, but all of y’all were top fucking tier. And the mission was a success. And you’re all dead. And I’m the Butcher of Torfan. And they’ve got me running around the galaxy cleaning up and playing detective for it. Maybe I’ll die and see yall again. Maybe I’ll live and keep talking to my ceiling,” she chuckles. “Y’all would get a kick out of the shit I’ve been doing lately. They really got me out here. I just killed a giant alien murder-tree. It talked and possessed people and shit.”

Her voice is calm, even as her vision blurs and re-blurs with new rushes of tears. She simply wipes them away.

“You know, maybe the name is alright. Maybe that’s what I am, because on _god_ I don’t regret killing a single one of those bastards. It’s just…you all died, too, and I do regret that. I do. Kyle’s a mess. I don’t even know what happened to McNeil and Houston after they got out. Hackett keeps sicking me on his stray marks like a damned dog. Most of my new crew is a little afraid of me, but I don’t make it easy for them not to. I don’t let them talk about y’all any kind of way, though, fuck that. Every last one of you was an exemplary soldier. Cream of the fucking space-crop.”

Amezcua used to say that at random. They could all be messing over the breakfast slop and she’d just blurt it out like they were coming back from some big mission. _We’re the cream of the fucking space-crop, I hope y’all know._

And then none of them came back from the big mission.

Ain’t that some shit.

Fuck Kyle for this. Running around space sure did tend to dredge up the things Zisys would rather not dwell on, and absolutely no one is helped by her crying in bed at ass o’clock in the morning.

…

 Tali likes the _Normandy_ even though it’s still hard for her to fall asleep in all that uncertain silence. How can they know it’s working if it’s not screaming out that very fact? This technology is strange, but they have not crashed yet. Tali is fairly certain her fear is unfounded, but it doesn’t help the tingle in the back of her neck. She keeps quiet about it, only ever expressed concern once because she thinks that Commander Shepard would quickly get tired of her worrying, no matter how nice she seems. The commander is a good person but she is rough. Already her personality has grated on Liara. And Ashley. And Kaidan. But she tends to smile at Tali, who is not entirely sure what she has done to deserve it.

But Tali takes it. Not many are kind to her people, so far from home. It makes digesting the weight of this ongoing, crazy mission easier, as this is absolutely not what she expected from her pilgrimage.

It is both exciting, and terrifying.

That is not why Shepard is crying in her bunk; Tali stands at Shepard’s door and listens to her talk to herself. Presumably. Tali hasn’t ever seen a ghost but that doesn’t mean much from a quarian fresh off the flotilla. Humans are a strange species. She likes them, though. Or at least, she likes Shepard. And Captain Anderson, the little she’s spoken to him. The Joker seems alright, as well as Dr. Chakwas.

No coincidence that these are all the humans that Shepard likes best, too.

The commander is currently very upset and Tali doesn’t think she can help; she’d been able to bring a smile to Shepard’s face after she’d shot her old friend on the Citadel, but that was just one death. Tali doesn’t know what she can do about this.

She knows that Shepard occasionally likes Wrex’s company but something tells her that it is not a gentle thing, and perhaps now she needs gentle. Things between her and Liara were…awkward, though the asari had told her (they were friends, in a way, when the scientist came down to the engines to spend time) that they were on good terms. Kaidan would not be a good choice, he lets his emotions all but strangle him sometimes…

“Eavesdropping?” Garrus strolls up, eyes twinkling. “Now, Tali…”

“She’s upset.” Tali shrugs, frowning at Garrus behind her mask.

“About this Major Kyle, yeah. Torfan was a nasty business.” Garrus shakes his head. “And that’s just hearing as an outsider. I can’t imagine…”

“I don’t think that we are meant to,” Tali says simply. “She does not seem to need more imaginings. Just what she has seen.”

Garrus goes quiet, and Tali thinks she might have offended him. Well, it’d be more than he deserves, with some of the…suggestions he’s made in regard to quarians. Anyway, she speaks the truth.

He seems to agree. “Sharper than sharp Tali’Zorah,” he says, chuckling. “But maybe we shouldn’t eavesdrop.”

“Now it is we, hmm? But I suppose…one of us should knock on the door, or both of us should leave.”

Garrus could help, potentially, though he has a tendency of misstepping around Shepard. Stumbling. Accidental, surely, but Tali thinks that he should simply be more astute. He was once an officer, anyway.

“You…knock on her door?” Garrus looks warily at the door, as if it harbors some threat. “That…huh…”

Before they can bicker about knocking or not (and what a silly thing to argue about), the door opens.

…

Red hair and red eyes, though this time they shine.

Garrus takes a step back, though Zisys makes no move forward. She doesn’t even look particularly upset. Mostly shocked that they are there at all.

Colorful, rich light filters out of the room behind her, going from red to purple as they all stare at each other.

“What is it?” Zisys crosses her tattooed arms over her chest, the fine cut of her muscles sharp in the garish overhead light. She wears an athletic bra and her stomach is bare, lined and hard. The muscles in her legs are heavier, thicker; she’s wearing shorts emblazoned with _N7_ that ride up on her hips, displaying the hard curves down to her feet. She’s got a black band tattooed around her left ankle.

“We didn’t know if it was appropriate to check on you,” Tali says. “But we want to.”

Garrus just nods because he’s not about to argue. He’d been on his way to his own quarters, didn’t even think Shepard would be awake right now.

Zisys smiles at Tali, and the ends of that smile are offered to him. “That’s sweet, Tali, but I’m fine. The job was just rough. You should go to sleep.”

She speaks directly to the quarian but Garrus knows the words-at least that last bit- are for him as well. Maybe she’s only being so nice because of Tali.

Tali bobs on the ball of her feet and nods. “If you say so. Just wanted to check.”

“Thank you.”

“See you later.” And just like that, Tali bounces away. She pinches his hand in passing as if to say, _you better follow me_ , and Garrus does initially, nodding to Shepard and walking away.

But he’s an idiot; he turns back as soon as Tali turns the corner, and Zisys is still standing in her doorway as if she’d known he couldn’t just take his ass to sleep.

“You sure you’re alright?” He asks, as if she hadn’t _just_ said.

Zisys leans against her door frame, her face hardening subtly as she looks him over. Her hair falls over her arms as she shifts her weight, draping her deep, bronze skin in red.

“You are so concerned about me, Vakarian,” she says. “I’m starting to wonder if it’s genuine.”

Uh oh. “I just-”

“-Was the sex that good?” She asks without batting an eye. “Because I see little other reason as to why you give so much of a damn. I fuck Wrex on the regular and _he_ doesn’t give this much of a shit.”

“Listen-”

“-I really don’t need pussy-whipped, faux concern. If you want to fuck me then okay, let it be that, but don’t…don’t do this. Tali doesn’t want shit from me. Her happy ass is just excited to be on board. Liara makes her shit plain, even if it takes a bit of prodding. Hell, Alenko is the most up-front dude in the galaxy. I can at least respect that. But I do _not_ abide-”

“-Damn it, let me talk,” Garrus snaps, and they both stare wide-eyed at each other for a long, drawn-out moment as they both register his reaction. Garrus’ heart beats hard, hit thrice over with adrenaline.

Her response, once she composes herself, is characteristically un-bothered.

“Then talk.”

Garrus sighs, shrugging. “I’m not following after you in hopes of sex, Commander. I just care. Don’t know why, but I do. I admire you. And I will fall all the way back if it makes you uncomfortable.”

She does not seem convinced, not with the way she narrows her eyes at him, scowling. Garrus stands perfectly still, waiting. He’d only said what is true. Well, some of it; he doesn’t think actually admitting that the sex had been _very_ good would help his case. His sheath twitches if he thinks about it too hard, which…he is a flawed life form. That’s all he can say about that.

“You admire me,” she says flatly.

“I do.”

“Squads of soldiers dead on my order, my old commanding officer gone off the rails in a damned biotic cult in the middle of bumfuck-nowhere space, I’m standing here in my bra talking to _you_ at three a.m., and you admire me. Sorry, Vakarian, but that sounds fake.”

Garrus can only shrug, her little insult like a glance off of his armor. “It’s…not?”

“They call me the Butcher of Torfan,” she says evenly. “And do you know what the two- the _two_ \- surviving squad members called me before they discharged? Heartless bitch. No, Mcneil called me a heartless bitch. _Houston_ called me a soulless whore because he caught me with the XO like two days later. _You can hardly shed a tear but you sure can fuck_ , is what he’d said.” She scoffs bitterly. “First time he’d ever said a thing out of line to me. I busted his lip right there.”

Garrus listens quietly, watching how her body belies the controlled way she speaks about her hurt. Tight shoulders and jittery fingers, shifting weight. But she holds eye contact. There are no tears, not like the few he’d seen after she’d killed her friend at Flux, but Garrus would be remiss to think that she isn’t crying.

Humans were sometimes like little wars within themselves. He isn’t entirely sure exactly how they survive.

“Zisys, you’re a skilled soldier and a determined leader. You’ve made decisions I’m not sure that I could. You think beyond yourself. And you have a heart. That’s why Tali’s warmed up to you so well.” He takes a step closer to her, watches the line of her neck extend as she looks up. He really is hopeless. “And I admire you.”

It’s no surprise to him that she just scoffs, tucking some of her hair behind her thrice-pierced ear. “That’s eloquent, but the last time I got this little speech from someone, they promptly tried to get me into bed. I was a bit younger and a lot dumber, so they succeeded. Like I said, I like my sex a bit more honest these days.”

Garrus shakes his head. “I’ve already said-”

“-Yeah, I hear you,” she sighs, looking down at her feet. Garrus looks, too. The skin is rough and a bit discolored compared to the rest of her, but her toenails are painted blue and her feet look a lot smaller outside of her boots. Little worn, delicate things.

 “Fine,” Zisys says after a while, and Garrus knows they’re done by the way she scratches at her chin because she does that at the end of every meeting. “Fine. You admire me. Lovely. Thanks for the talk, Vakarian, but I think we’ve run the gamut of time I’m willing to stand with you in this hallway this morning. We’ve got four hours till we’re up and running again.”

If he’s telling the truth, it’s not a bad place to end. At least her hands have stopped fidgeting.

Garrus steps away from the door. “You’re right. Try and get some rest, ma’am.”

But then, because he really is a walking disaster when it comes to these things, “You know, I never said I…didn’t think about you that way. I do. It’s just, that’s not why I give a damn.”

She blinks. “Think about me.”

“Sex, with you. Being with you. Because it _was_ that good. It was great. But surprisingly, I can feel multiple things and navigate them accordingly.” He shrugs. “If you really want honesty.”

“Yeah.” She furrows her brow, licking her lips. It’s not meant to be suggestive, her lips really are kind of dry, but he is fixated. “I do.”

And so Garrus comes close to her again, giving her enough time to move away before he cups her cheek in his hand. Her skin is so warm, and he realizes that she’s flushed. From crying or from frustration, or from him, he doesn’t know. But he can hope.

He drags his finger over her full bottom lip, pulls it so the bright pink skin that sits against her teeth shows. Then he traces the curve of her top lip, sweeping the length of his thumb across her mouth.

As a bonus, her hair, heavy and fragrant with something, tangles around his claws as his fingers curl around the back of her head.

Humans are responsive to stimuli, extremely so in many cases, and though a sharp exhale is the only sound Zisys makes it is sound enough. Human mouths are also very, very soft.  Maybe hers is the softest. Her breath is sweet with human candy (she has a favorite kind and offers them out, but only on missions) that tinges her teeth and tongue bright red.

Then he pulls away, because boundaries. Ha, boundaries.

Zisys still frowns at him, arms still folded, but for once at a loss for words. That is enough for him.

“Get some rest,” he repeats softly. “We need you at your best, Commander. We need you.”

It takes everything in him not to run the way down to his room, but he definitely walks faster than usual. Because holy shit, holy _shit_.

Still, Garrus doesn’t hear the closing click of her door until he’s nearly rounded the corner.

…

_We need you at your best, Commander. We need you._

Zisys would be lying if she said that wasn’t exactly what she needed to hear.

She’d also be lying if she said she didn’t believe Garrus’s shpeal. Or the way he’d touched her. Because she thinks that she might.

Thankfully, no one is around to ask her the latter, and she can take her little three hour nap pretending like it didn’t happen at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Tali and Garrus are like an awkward dynamic duo who don't really like each other.  
> Well at least, Tali thinks Garrus is an idiot.


End file.
